Storm Warning
by Alekto
Summary: Complete. Will's first trip on the Black Pearl after POTC turns out to be a little more eventful than he had planned.
1. Part 1

Storm Warning  
  
By Alekto  
  
* * * * *  
  
Disclaimer: I didn't own 'em last week, I didn't own 'em yesterday, I don't own 'em today. Anyone else noticing a trend?  
  
Summary: Vignette that ended up being slightly longer than originally envisaged. Will's first trip on the Black Pearl post-POTC. Will's POV. (And am I the only one who thinks Fanfiction.net needs to add PWP to its list of genres.?)  
  
Rating: PG  
  
A/N: This is my first attempt at POTC fic and is un-betaed, so apologies for any mistakes that slip through. Not being an expert on the nautical stuff, I've nicked most of that sort of thing from one of Dudley Pope's novels. For the record, I'm English, and so is the spelling (at least I hope so ).  
  
* * * * *  
  
Part 1 (of 2)  
  
It was the kind of balmy day that could have made even the most cynical forget that Europeans in the Caribbean were far more likely to die of various tropical fevers than by violence.  
  
High above the Black Pearl's masthead I could see clouds, looking little more than far off wisps of cotton, scudding across an impossibly blue sky reflecting in an impossibly blue sea that was punctuated by light glinting like mirror shards caught in the waves. The late morning heat of the tropical sun that could be so relentless on land in the fields and in the streets of Port Royal was muted and made pleasant by the breezes from the Atlantic. I just wished Elizabeth was there to share it with me.  
  
I had been on sea voyages before, indeed, on several occasions, but this time was blessedly different. Before, there had always been a sense of haste, of urgency, sometimes of danger. The last time I had been a passenger on the Black Pearl, I'd been a prisoner of its Captain, Barbossa, and of his cursed crew. The memory of those few days was one I longed to be rid of. This same ship had carried them then and the foul miasma had hung heavy around it as if it too was as accursed as they. The Pearl was still black painted, but the dark sails billowing high overhead were whole, not torn and shredded as they had once been, and the only smell was that of the sea mingling with acrid tang of freshly tarred rigging. Not for the first time I found myself looking around for any sign of the years of neglect she had suffered under Barbossa's charge, and wondered at the amount of work that Jack and the crew must have put in since our last meeting in bringing her back to life.  
  
From my place on the windward side of the Quarterdeck I glanced over towards where Jack was standing, his hands resting on the wheel. His ever restless gaze flickered around the ship, taking in the set of sails, the detail of rigging I could not even begin to comprehend and the horizon, empty but for the dull purple smudges of mountains off to the South and the barely visible white line of distant surf.  
  
Even to my inexpert eyes, the Pearl was making a good pace. The wind was no more than a few points off the quarter and under full sail the gently rhythmic movement of ship beneath me made scant demand of the sea legs that I was slowly acquiring.  
  
"A soldier's wind it is, lad," sniffed a familiar voice from behind me. Gibbs, Jack's old friend that I had met in Tortuga. I looked askance at his words and he moved to lean on the taffrail next to me. "Old Navy man's term," he went on to explain with a grin. "The kind of wind that gives a ship an easy enough ride that even the most lubberly of soldiers can bear it without illness."  
  
I grimaced as his words brought to mind the unwanted image of dozens of seasick soldiers barracked in the usual cramped conditions below deck of a man o' war. My return from the Isla de Muerta on the HMS Dauntless had given me an idea of the unpleasantness of such accommodations, even though at Norrington's behest I had been billeted in the Midshipmans' berth with the dozen or so others who lived there rather than with the crew. I didn't have the heart to complain, though, not when all the time I knew that for Jack the voyage back to Port Royal had been so much worse, shackled in the dank blackness of the Dauntless' brig.  
  
My gaze returned to studying the man who had the name of being one of the most notorious of the pirates of the Caribbean: *Captain* Jack Sparrow. Watching him there at the helm of his beloved Pearl I could see an unguarded contentment in his expression that was so very far from away from the outlandish airs and obfuscation he presented to the world at large as to make him seem another man altogether. I couldn't help but think that for Jack, happiness was to be at the helm of the ship for which he had spent the past ten years searching for, with the wind at his heels and the sea beneath him. A reluctant smile crossed my face as I felt obliged to add in the occasional encounter with heavily laded merchantmen commanded by masters sanguine about the inevitability of encounters with pirates. Jack was not one for the sedentary life.  
  
A faint smile came to my face as I considered how only a year ago I would have derided or even laughed out loud at the idea of being a willing guest of pirates and passenger on a pirate ship, so long had I hated the breed, but now it felt oddly like a homecoming of sorts. I recalled how I had rubbished Jack's casual assertion back on the Interceptor that piracy was in my blood, a legacy from my father, but I couldn't argue against how right it had felt siding with a pirate facing down Norrington and his men.  
  
And I wondered when exactly I had started to consider Jack Sparrow, the pirate, as one of the best men I'd ever known.  
  
Oh, I knew Jack was no saint. He was gleefully devious, frequently erratic - on occasion worryingly so - and prone to acts of such utter recklessness as to have left me, and most other people, standing there in slack-jawed disbelief. I mean, who else would have had the gall to have even attempted something as outrageous as to steal - that is to say: commandeer - a Royal Navy brig with only two men, one of whom at the time didn't know a sheet from a shroud from a stay? Now I knew Jack, I began to reconsider how many of the outrageous stories told about his exploits might in fact have been true.  
  
Jack, as I had discovered early on in our acquaintance, was a man who would do whatever necessary if he believed it to be the right thing to do. Unfortunately, what Jack considered to be the right thing to do was frequently at odds with what the authorities considered to be the right thing to do. At least in the life he had chosen as a pirate Jack was free to pursue his own, perhaps slightly skewed, sense of right and wrong.  
  
Next to me Gibbs squinted as he pointed out features of the distant coast. "If I remember a'right, I reckon that big headland over there's goin' ta be Punta Caraballeda 'n' beyond that there's Cojo. . . 'r is it Mulatos. . ?" His words trailed off as he frowned, lost in thought.  
  
"It's Cojo, then Mulatos, Mr. Gibbs," came Jack's voice with only a hint of its usual faint, cockney slur. "And our anchorage is a bay the other side of Mulatos, between there and La Guaira. If this wind holds we should be there by nightfall."  
  
There was hint of something uncertain in Jack's tone that made both Gibbs and I look at him. His gaze was returning again and again to the land to the South, and I could see the ghost of a frown on his forehead. Wary of Jack's idiosyncrasies, both of us nonetheless scanned the horizon for any hint of what had given Jack pause. All I could make out was a peculiar clarity of light over the mountains that made up the headland, like sunlight burning through sea mist.  
  
"What is it, Cap'n?" Gibbs asked in confusion, evidently having seen as little as I.  
  
Jack didn't answer, but just looked at the dog vanes tied near the wheel. Each was made of cork and feathers tied onto a length of string that had all morning been streaming in the constant breeze. Now they were bobbing fitfully, and now I was thinking about it I could notice the change in movement of the ship as the way came off her and the wind dropped away. Jack's frown remained as he looked once more at the far off land.  
  
"Mr. Gibbs," he began, the uncertainty gone as if it had never been. "I'll trouble you to reduce sail."  
  
"Cap'n?" came the startled reply, and I couldn't help but agree with Gibbs' surprise. To take in sail when the wind was dropping? It seemed like foolishness.  
  
"Jack?" I murmured, wanting a reason for so inexplicable an order as much as Gibbs.  
  
He ignored both of us, looked aloft at the sails that were now alternately bellying and falling slack in the uneven wind, then back to whatever trouble it seemed that he alone had managed to see on the coast. "Now, if you please, Mr. Gibbs," he said mildly. "I want the t'gallants and courses taken in, and get a double reef on the tops'ls. . . if we have the time."  
  
If we have the time. . ? Gibbs looked at me in confusion for a moment before the habit of obedience took over and he started bellowing out the necessary commands to fulfil his captain's admittedly bizarre orders. Orders that would have the Pearl jogging along at little better than walking pace in so fitful a wind. "Aye, Cap'n. Hands aloft to take in sail. Man the t'gallant clewlines. . . Stand by t'gallant sheets and halyards. . . Haul taut. . ."  
  
I watched as sailors raced up the ratlines and the highest of the Pearl's sails were taken in. "Will," Jack interrupted, "I need you to get below and check the guns are secured in their tackles."  
  
"Right! Uh. . . aye, Cap'n!" I amended, much, it seemed, to Jack's amusement.  
  
Below decks I moved from gun to gun, checking the heavy rope blocks and tackles that secured each to the massive timbers of the ship's hull. The Pearl might have been a pirate ship, but to my admittedly uneducated eyes, there was nothing slovenly or haphazard about the way she was run. As far as I could tell, everything was as it should be. From above I could still hear Gibbs' stentorian bellows. "Let go the t'gallant bowlines. . . In t'gallants. . . Lower yard men furl the courses. . . Trice up. . . lay out. . ."  
  
I returned on deck in time to see the Pearl's topmen at work putting the required double reef in the remaining sails she was carrying: the fore and main topsails. "Haul taut. . . Tend the braces. . . Trim the yards. . . Haul the bowlines. . ."  
  
"Guns are all secure," I reported briskly, receiving a nod in reply. I was about to ask again the reason for his orders when I looked in the direction of a shore I could no longer see, a shore that was now hidden behind a roiling wall of dark cloud and tumbling spray that seemed to be racing across the sea towards us. "My God," I breathed, equally awed and dismayed at the sight. Where had *that* come from. . ?  
  
My reaction seemed to be shared by most of the crew. All of us looked at Jack, instinctively seeking reassurance from the ship's captain in the face of the impending danger. On Jack's face was a taut, almost eager little smile as he turned the ship so the squall, when it hit, would catch the ship on the stern quarter rather than side on.  
  
"Lord save us," I heard from Gibbs. "Looks like we're in fer an 'ell of a blow. I just 'ope the riggin' can take it," he added sourly.  
  
"Nice range for a broadside, eh, Mr Gibbs?" Jack drawled sardonically as the spray line neared.  
  
"Reckon you could reach it with a musket, Cap'n," one of the crew called out dryly, drawing strength from his Captain's calm.  
  
"Or a pistol," I muttered a few seconds later.  
  
Jack turned to me and grinned, gold teeth glinting in the fading light. "Everyone find somethin' t' 'old on to!" he yelled. The crew that were on deck locked their arms around rigging or looped whatever rope was convenient about themselves. I watched as Cotton grabbed his ever present parrot and tucked it inside his vest, the bird's squawk of protest all but muffled by the howl of the approaching wind.  
  
Then, suddenly, the squall was upon us.  
  
* * * * * 


	2. Part 2

Storm Warning  
  
By Alekto  
  
Part 2 (of 2)  
  
Then, suddenly, the squall was upon us.  
  
It struck with an almost physical presence, as if in the merest instant the sea itself had come alive and was assailing us. Rain no less dense than a waterfall lashed across the deck, driven horizontal under the force of the wind. Exposed skin stung under its needle sharpness and within seconds I was all but blinded as salt water sluiced across my face and into my eyes. The deck beneath my feet shuddered and even over the screaming gale I could hear the Pearl's stressed timbers groan like the protest of a living thing in pain as the waves struck her.  
  
Scant feet from where I was clinging onto part of the rigging for dear life, Jack and two others were braced at the wheel, wrestling with it in an attempt to keep the ship under even the vaguest semblance of control. It seemed a lost cause. As I watched I could see the deck slowly begin to tilt as that enormous pressure worked to heel her over.  
  
"She's not payin' off, Cap'n! We're around too far!" howled one of the men at the wheel, his panicky voice almost lost as the sound of the wind was joined by the shrill, ever rising, drone of ropes vibrating under too much strain.  
  
"Ease 'er a couple of points!" I heard Jack yell back in scarcely comprehensible reply, and watched through frantically blinking eyes as, spoke by spoke, he and the others allowed the Pearl's wheel to turn. From what I could tell, though, it was having little effect. "Hold 'er there, damn your eyes," he shouted at them, "hold 'er or she'll broach!"  
  
A wave as tall as the rail I had been leaning on so casually no more than an hour before slammed into us, and I could have sworn I felt the massive bulk of the Pearl stagger under the blow like a punch-drunk fighter. The leaden grey water swept across the deck, dragging a couple of the crew from where they had taken refuge in the ship's waist, and washing them like some much detritus in the leeside scuppers.  
  
From high above I heard the alarming creak from the mizzen mast crescendo to a horribly loud crack that sounded almost like cannon fire. I looked up in time to see a tangle of timber, rope and canvas fold down onto the quarterdeck.  
  
"Jack!" I screamed in horror as the debris collapsed over where he and the others had been stood at the wheel. Before I even considered the stupidity of such a move I had released the death grip I had on the rigging to stagger over there. The wash from another wave knocked me off my feet and I frantically scrabbled to grab hold of something, anything, to stop me from going over the side.  
  
More by luck than anything else I had grabbed onto the debris tented around the wheel. To my utter disbelief I saw another part of the same tangled mess being pushed aside from below and Jack's head, sans red bandanna, appeared. For a few moments his eyes were glazed in confusion, then they cleared and I could only watch in amazement as he, heedless of the blood streaming down the side of his face, forced aside what had once been part of the mizzen mast to grab hold of the splintered remnant of the ship's wheel.  
  
Wondering as I did so what had happened to my own sanity, I clambered over the wreckage to his side, absently noting as I did the entirely inappropriate angle the ship's deck was tilted at. Jack accepted my place at the wheel without comment, merely offering me a fey, perhaps not entirely reassuring grin. "Just 'old 'er steady, Will," he shouted out. "She's comin' back to us. You feel it?"  
  
For a moment I wasn't sure what he meant, then I too felt the change in the ship's movement that I knew Jack must have been so much more attuned to than me. The Pearl, which had been like a dead weight pummelled by the wind was slowly coming back to life, finally moving with the sea and the wind as she gathered way.  
  
The drone of the ropes was joined by a noise like distant, rapid pistol shot and through the sheeting rain I could see the main topsail had torn free of the sheets that had been holding it and was flogging itself into shreds. Beyond it, all but hidden in the storm, I could just about make out dull grey shape of the fore topsail, bulging and straining but still intact.  
  
"We'll 'old 'er on this course, Will," Jack shouted to me, as if I could hold a course in this weather. I looked sideways at him. He stood there, both hands braced on what was left of the Pearl's wheel, a glaze of blood washed over the one side of his face from some head wound, I had to guess. But his expression was one of sheer exhilaration as if there were no place else in the world he would rather be.  
  
And not for the first time I wondered for Jack's sanity.  
  
I glanced upward, catching movement through the sheeting rain and was just about able to make out the dull grey silhouettes of some of the crew fighting their way up the ratlines towards the flapping shreds that were all that was left of the main topsail. Their clinging movement reminded me of lizards creeping up the walls of buildings. To go aloft in this. . . I mused, and thought that perhaps Jack's sanity wasn't the only one I ought to have been questioning.  
  
The tilt of the Pearl's deck was slowly returning to normal. The crew began to charily move about as they became accustomed to the now more predictable tossing of the ship. Somehow, despite the wind and rain, not to mention the ceaseless pitching of the ship, the topmen had managed to haul in the frayed remnants of the main topsail. The wreckage of the fallen mizzen topgallant mast was hacked away from around the wheel and shoved overboard, and the two men who had been standing with Jack at the wheel were carried below.  
  
After an eternity of fighting the driving rain and howling gale, I gradually became aware of a lowering in the pitch of the drone from the ropes. Was the wind finally easing? A few minutes later I was sure of it. The bucking of the deck was noticeably less severe, and the once torrential rain was slackening to nothing more than a shower.  
  
Holding the ship on course became less of a wrestling match as the sky cleared and the squall passed almost as quickly as it had blown up. I looked over at Jack and couldn't help the choked off laugh as I took in his appearance. The fearsome Captain Jack Sparrow presently resembled nothing so much as a half-drowned rat. His long black hair was plastered across his face, some of the trademark braids part unravelled. Streaks of kohl marked the creases in his face where he had been squinting against the wind and rain. The faint, white bloom of salt was everywhere.  
  
Then I caught the dazed, terribly weary look in his eyes as he met my gaze, and remembered that he had not escaped unscathed from the collapsing rigging. "Jack, you're hurt," I pointed out. "Go below. You need to rest."  
  
From his response it was as if I hadn't spoken. "Mr. Gibbs!" he called out as the man appeared on the quarterdeck. "Get someone to sound the well. See if we sprung any planks in that lot."  
  
"Aye, Cap'n," Gibbs nodded and left to his task.  
  
In the waist I saw AnaMaria supervising the replacement of the ruined topsail with a spare from the sail locker. I managed to catch her gaze and divert her attention to the noticeably unsteady man stood next to me who was leaning heavily on the wheel for support. She pursed her lips in mute, if annoyed, understanding of Jack's stubbornness, gave a few orders to the men around her then came to join us on the quarterdeck.  
  
Jack looked up at her approach and steadily returned the measured look she gave him. I had the sense of an entire argument being waged in that mutual silent regard.  
  
~You're not going to be fooling anyone, Jack, so don't even try. We all know you're hurt.~  
  
~*Captain*, luv, remember?~  
  
~And don't try and change the subject, either, *Captain*. Look at you: you can't even stand on your own!~  
  
~I'm fine!~  
  
~Jack, I've seen three day corpses that look better than you do right now!~  
  
~Is there perhaps something I ought to know about this, AnaMaria, luv?~  
  
~Shut up, Jack! Look, just go below, get some rest and leave the handling of the ship to us. For a few hours, anyway.~  
  
~I'm not moving; not until I know she's alright.~  
  
Their face-off was only interrupted by Gibbs' return. "There's a couple o' feet o' water in the well, Cap'n, but I reckon it'd be from water comin' in from the hatches so given time we can get 'er dry again with the pumps. The hull's solid."  
  
"Thank you, Mr Gibbs," Jack murmured, the relief in his tone only too apparent. The topsail and even the mizzen topgallant mast could be replaced, but all of us knew that any hull damage beyond the most superficial would have been a much worse problem: after all, it wasn't as if we could sail the Pearl into port for repairs.  
  
AnaMaria had evidently shared in our relief at the thankfully limited scale of the damage the storm had caused, but her attention had swiftly returned to the more immediate and pressing problem of dealing with a mule-headed Captain. She crossed her arms and glowered at him unflinchingly.  
  
~*Now* that you know she's going to be alright, you can go below and rest, or so help me I'll knock you out and haul you there myself! Clear?~  
  
I'd half expected another debate, but the comparative ease with which Jack acquiesced told both of us more than we wanted to know about how bad he had to have been feeling. As it was we were both ready when no more than a couple of steps from the wheel his legs folded under him and he pitched to the deck. AnaMaria took the wheel while I all but carried the Pearl's semi- conscious Captain to his cabin.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Over the next day Jack slipped in and out of consciousness, which given the size of the goose egg on his head ought not to have been too surprising. I was just amazed that he had managed to stay conscious throughout the storm! With Jack off his feet, AnaMaria and Gibbs ably took over the running and repair of the ship. The anchorage we had been heading for when the storm had hit was a more than adequate place for the task of getting the spare timbers carried in the hold cut and fitted to replace the mizzen topgallant mast and spar. It was secluded enough to offer some shelter from any roving opportunists wanting to take advantage of the ship's temporary vulnerability.  
  
With AnaMaria taking a turn standing watch over her sleeping Captain, I headed up on deck to watch as the last of the rigging was fitted about the new mast, and the replacement mizzen topgallant hauled into place. Gibbs was standing on the quarterdeck, keeping a firm eye on the work as it progressed. I headed over to him, finally able to put to him the questions that had been gnawing at my mind since the storm.  
  
"How do you think he knew?" I asked.  
  
"Wha' d'ye mean, lad?" he replied phlegmatically.  
  
"Jack," I started to clarify. "The storm. How do you think he knew it was out there? What was he able to see that we couldn't? I mean, I was looking where he was and I couldn't see anything amiss."  
  
"Nor I. Nor, I reckon, thinkin' about it could most men, even countin' those who've spent a lifetime at sea. A man c'n learn to sail a ship, 'n' given time c'n learn t'sail it well, but to my way of figurin' there's a few men I've come across in all my time at sea who were born to it, 'n' Jack Sparrow's one o' them."  
  
I shrugged, figuring it was as good an answer as I was going to get. Perhaps I'd ask Jack when he was up and about again.  
  
"So what would have happened to us if we hadn't taken in sail?" I asked, wanting confirmation of an answer I had already arrived at myself.  
  
"Speed that squall came down on us, we wouldn't've 'ad time to do much. . . p'rhaps we might've managed t'get in the t'gallants. . . p'rhaps not. If we'd've been lucky, it would've just torn the sticks out of 'er. Dismasted us," he explained at my blank look.  
  
"And if not. . ?" I pushed.  
  
"Well, your good friend Commodore Norrington would likely've been rid a few more pirates."  
  
I nodded slowly. It was pretty near what I had worked out for myself, and I wondered how many times in the past other ships, not so fortunate as we, had encountered such a storm and ended up on the bottom with no one back in port the wiser as to how or why. "It's strange," I finally admitted, "but right in the worst of it, when I was convinced we'd all had it for sure, Jack looked like he was almost enjoying himself. The smile on his face was. . . You know, sometimes I think I just don't understand him at all."  
  
I was heading back to the cabin and almost missed his quietly amused reply. "D'ye not, lad, b'cause I rec'llect that same smile bein' on your face too. . ."  
  
~ fin ~  
  
A/N: My first POTC fic, so tell me what you think! Ought I to have a go at writing another? (And if so does anyone have the time to help me with beta reading it?) 


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